Suhail Naqshbandi

Suhail Naqshbandi is an interdisciplinary visual artist based out of Kashmir. He has been working as a visual storyteller from various positions –being a political cartoonist, illustrator, painter and graphic designer– for over twenty years. He has also worked in the fields of journalism, e-learning and academia, in relation to art and design. His focus lies on telling the stories of struggle, resilience, resistance and dissent of Kashmiri peοple. In popular parlance, Kashmir is called “Heaven on Earth,” and it indeed is in terms of natural beauty. But, behind this beauty, there also lie the sacrifices and tragedy of the peοple of this land, on account of decades of conflict. So, Suhail tries to tap into that narrative of his peοple and their political aspirations. He currently is an independent practitioner, trying to deal with censorship and ways to tell his stories in the form of a graphic novel.

As a visual artist from Indian-administered Kashmir I was the lead political cartoonist for Kashmir’s largest English daily, 'Greater Kashmir', until last year when I was forced to resign due to censorship. It was my second stint as a political cartoonist at this newspaper. Major curbs on my freedom of expression had, in fact, started in the run up to the general elections in India. In February 2019, the government in New Delhi issued a notice to the Jammu & Kashmir administration, requiring them to report all instances of what they termed “resistance art”. Basically, any form of art made in Kashmir and even mildly critical of the Indian government had to be stopped. This translated into my cartoons being frequently withheld from publication. Therefore, before it became any worse, I decided to withdraw as a mark of protest against this censorship and quit the newspaper in April 2019.

When I resigned from 'Greater Kashmir', I kept publishing my work for free via social media channels. But with the disruption that ensued on August 5, 2019, when India unilaterally revoked Kashmir’s long-held autonomy, even this space was shut. We’ve had no internet access since then as Indian authorities snapped landlines, broadband, and mobile Internet – even SMS services were stopped. Kashmir was a black hole from where no news could come, leave alone art and cartoons. The Internet, only now opened at a very low speed, was for months limited to some government offices, and generally inaccessible to common peοple like me.

In this post truth era, where attempts are being made to rewrite history, we need to present and preserve the truth of our past and present. Through the support of the Onassis ΑiR Emergency Fellowship, I will start a research for a graphic novel, which will hopefully allow me to express my art freely. The overarching story covers the two generations, from the protagonist time of witnessing the start of armed rebellion in 1990s to his father’s time in 1930s, where the roots of the Kashmir issue lie.